Domestic Violence: How Non-Facts Become Facts - Richard L. Davis - MensNewsDaily.com�

Domestic Violence: How Non-Facts Become Facts

February 12, 2005


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by Richard L. Davis

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I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest. - A. Whitney Brown

Not long ago a prominent journal decided not to accept a manuscript of mine. Their reasoning was that I did not provide enough “empirical support” for my claims. While I agree the article may not have been “professional” enough for their journal, I am not sure about the lack of “empirical support.” The “fact” is that all citations do not provide “empirical support.”

The following appears twice on the first page of an article presented in the December 16, 1999 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (JAMA): “Domestic violence is the most common cause of nonfatal injury to women in the United States.” The article is about injuries to women, and excludes injuries to men.

This domestic violence injury non-fact has been written many times and so often presented as fact by the electronic and print media, it has actually become accepted as a fact by the general public and many professionals, researchers and domestic violence advocates.

This domestic violence injury non-fact is presented as fact by one of the more prestigious medical journals in the world. It is co-authored by 9 medical doctors and two staff members. Once JAMA reports that domestic violence is the most common cause of nonfatal injury to women in the United States, the JAMA article itself will be used to cite that non-fact as fact.

If you read the article or visit the abstract on the JAMA website you will see that this article has been cited by 14 other articles. Now researchers can provide 15 instances of “empirical support” to document this non-fact as fact. This non-fact to fact to “empirical support” process is not very complicated.

The JAMA article has three citations for its “most common injury” claim. The first citation was: “Family and other intimate assaults – Atlanta, 1984. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1990;39:525-9.” Results are here.

What is a fact is that the above study provides little to no data to support the JAMA researchers claim. It is a very small study and the majority of the participants are African American women living in an urban setting. The report contains only a total of 150 reported non-fatal incidents. That information is gleaned from police reports and presents no comparison with other non-fatal injury reports.

The only information in the MMWR study that might be seen as supporting the researchers claim is a paragraph that notes another study that claims domestic violence is responsible for more injuries than motor vehicle accidents, rape, and mugging combined. However, the MMWR study includes a warning about that study that the researchers chose to ignore.

In fact, the MMWR study warns that this other small study is also takes place in an inner city emergency room where the population is almost exclusively African America women living at the lower end of the socioeconomic strata. These women from an inner city minority community do not accurately represent a cross section of America women. In fact the rate for injuries in the MMWR study notes that African America women were injured three times more than white women.

The second citation in the JAMA article is: “Grisso JA, Wishner AR, Schwarz DF, Weene BA, Holmes JH, Sutton RI., A population-based study of injuries in inner-city women. Am J Epidemiol 1991:134:59-68.” An abstract of the results from that study can be found online.

These JAMA article researchers appear to ignore the fact that the study above they cite actually demonstrates that the major cause of injury to women were falls not domestic violence. Further, it reports “that very little is know about nonfatal injuries to women.” It concludes that, “More work is needed to understand the nature of injuries occurring to young women in urban communities.

This study also does not provide a cross section of American women. The majority of the participants are from a poor, urban, African American community. How can these JAMA article researchers conclude that the information in either of these first two studies is empirical scientific data that provides “support” for their domestic violence injury claim?

The third citation the JAMA article cites is: “Stark E, Flitcraft A. Spouse abuse. In: Surgeon General’s workshop on violence and public health: source book, 1985: Centers for Disease Control, 1986:AS1-SA43.” What is a fact is that this fact was never presented as “fact” by the Attorney General.

In fact the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is on record that they will not recognize this “fact” as being presented by them or the Attorney General as a “fact” at the conference The JAMA article researchers either ignore or are unaware of the CDC disclaimer.

What is more surprising than the non-fact citations presented in the JAMA article, is the fact that these 9 doctors and two staff members failed to notice that two out of their three citations lead them to the CDC.

All that researchers and others who are concerned about this claim have to do is to visit the CDC website to find out that they claim that domestic violence is the most common cause of nonfatal injury to women in the United States is without “empirical support”.

The CDC website documents unequivocally that domestic violence is not the most common cause of nonfatal injury to women in the United States. There is not a single scientific study anywhere in the United States, or in fact elsewhere, that documents this claim to be true.

This article establishes another less than “reputable citation” for gender feminists [gender feminists are people who believe women’s rights are more important than victim or civil rights] and others who want to continue with this hoax. The truth is that these researchers for this JAMA article, did not present a single citation that can actually document their domestic violence injury claim has “empirical support.”

How is it possible that these researchers and a prestigious medical journal remain so unconcerned or uninformed about the truth? Is it possible that the gender feminist ideology has become more important to some domestic violence researchers than the truth?

Richard L. Davis